PlayStation 5, Xbox Two Might Launch Sooner Than Expected

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One may still be in relative infancy given the life cycles of previous-gen machines, but in this fast-moving culture of technology, folks are always looking ahead to what’s next. While it will be a number of years before the respective successors of these two consoles manifest, though, the wait mightn’t be as long as we suspected and in fact, work has perhaps already started on the PlayStation 5 and what will likely be referred to as the Xbox Two.

In the Digital Age in which we live, it’s almost never too early to begin talking about a product, even the preceding version has yet to hit the market. Thus, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to hear that Devinder Kumar, CFO at chip maker AMD, has already alluded to the fact that the next-gen consoles may already be in the works, and although he didn’t elaborate, it won’t be long until the blogosphere begins to hunt for clues.

Given that Kumar was speaking at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Technology Conference on Thursday, it’s easy to be a tad skeptical about his claims. After all, utterances from big players in the financial game – notably analysts – often leave much to be desired. But given how AMD’s processing tech partially powers the PS4, Xbox One and even Nintendo’s struggling Wii U, we must consider Kumar a source genuinely in the know.

Kumar noted that "the life cycle of the [consoles] are probably going to be shorter" moving forward, with clients like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo apparently "already thinking about what comes next."

The current-gen console battle is already in full swing, with Sony having capitalized on some poor pre-release PR from Microsoft in establishing a notable, but not unassailable lead. The Redmond’s entertainment machine was hindered by the fact that it harbors less power than its main competitor, with a higher cost due to the mandatory nature of Kinect.

Since launch, Microsoft has ditched the Kinect to match the price with the PS4 for those that can go without the motion-sensing tech, and with a software update set to offer a modest bump in GPU bandwidth, Satya Nadella’s company will be hoping to atone for those early misjudgments.